Everything about Pacific Rim is big. You've got huge robots fighting gigantic monsters, but those don't even come close to stacking up against Guillermo del Toro's ginormous plans for the franchise.

The filmmaker spoke with Collider mostly about The Book of Life, but did field a question about Pacific Rim 2, teasing, "Some of your favorite characters come back, some others don’t because we have decided that we’re going to shoot ambitiously and say ‘Let’s hope we have three movies,’ so some characters come in at the end of the second, hoping that it will ramp up on the third one."

Del Toro started working with Zak Penn on the screenplay for the sequel before it was even officially greenlit. This summer, Universal finally gave the movie a go-ahead while del Toro announced an animated series leading up to the sequel as well as more comics in the works. No word on a third film has been officially announced, but if the second performs as well as the first did -- it earned $411 million worldwide -- don't be surprised if it happens.

Pacific Rim 2 is scheduled to hit theaters on April 7, 2017.